How I use Ownermag.com to find inspiration, ideas and raise my productivity

December 9th, 2013 By: Ash

Do you have favourite websites you go to when you’re looking for inspiration?

I have a few bookmarked on my computer.

One site that has recently become a wellspring of ideas and motivation is www.ownermag.com. This site was founded by one of my favourite bloggers – Chris Brogan.

As soon as the site was announced publicly I was scrambling for my keyboard and had signed up within minutes.

My enthusiasm wasn’t ill founded.

There’s a lot of genuinely useful free content and I’m now a keen subscriber. If you haven’t checked it out already, I recommend you do so.

It’s all about taking ownership in various aspects of your life.

Whether your an owner of a business, or just the owner of goals and intentions, the aim of this site is to bring you various perspectives and insights that will help you get there. It does this through useful articles and interviews.

I’ve been to the site several times since it’s launch, and have come away with something valuable each time.

At first I balked at this idea, but on reflection it makes perfect sense. There’s no point scrambling to do everything more efficiently. Better to focus on the important stuff and do it well.

It’s important to get an understanding of what is important rather than urgent a la Stephen Covey and just execute on that. Often the other ‘nice to haves’ become redundant. The passage of time is a good barometer of how critical things are – the really critical priorities usually still need to be done a few days or weeks later. You can check out the full article here

This post talks about an approach to productivity that dates back to the 1900’s where Ivy Levy taught executives at Bethlehem Steel to sit down and write 6 things that they were going to do the next day. Charles Schwab (the head executive) later sent a check worth $25,000 to Ivy Levy which would be about $577,000 in today’ terms. Check out the full article here

This one’s from the founder of Owner magazine and talks about how he keeps himself organised. One of Chris’ favourite tools is to plain old paper. I have to say I agree. While I do love using Omnifocus to create targeted to do lists, I often find scribbling on paper to be very reassuring.

Nostalgic even! In fact, I often use pencil and paper to get my out of a creative rut.

This one is a must for bloggers. Dorie explains that there’s here’s only so much bandwidth and this means we need to be clear about what’s important and prioritise those tasks. She explains how to do this via the framework of an editorial calendar. Check out Dorie’s post here.

This article is close to my heart. I love eating out and I do it a lot. Terry explains that eating out doesn’t necessarily mean you have to gain weight. If you plan before you leave to eat out by getting hold of the menu in advance or if you order order an appetiser rather than a main you can make smarter choices. Check out Terry’s eating out hacks here

This page features several interviews including one with the great Gary Vaynerchuck (author of Crush it) and Alex Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit.com).

There are quite a few interviews on this page which gave me great insights on entrepreneurship. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to check out the interview with Gary Vaynerchuk. You can be sure to learn a thing or two about how to live a life of passion and profit.

For the hard core Gary Vaynerchuk fans out there Gary talks about his latest book “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook”

What are your favourite sites? Where do you go for your ideas and inspiration?

About Productive Insights

Productive Insights (PI) offers valuable productivity related content to busy people who want to win back a few hours each week. It also discusses mindfulness in daily life which is aimed at creating a deeper sense of purpose and meaning in everyday activities.

If you are a looking to reduce your stress levels or create more free time in your day then you've come to the right place.